communicate :: collaborate :: commemorate

There has been a profound change at Microsoft since Satya Nadella took over from Ballmer as CEO. You have to read his book to understand how having a special needs child challenged him in new ways. It changed him, and he eventually started to change the culture within Microsoft. Zuckerberg is an example how you can build a company with no moral compass, and Nadella is a good example of how a new leader can set new standards.

You only have to think of Stephen Hawking to agree to this observation:

"People with disabilities are the ultimate early adopters and in many ways are ahead of the curve in terms of tech," said Saqib Shaikh, a software engineer in London who leads Microsoft's Seeing AI research project. "They have a lot more to gain so are willing to try things out a lot earlier on, when things aren't quite ready yet, and then they help that technology mature into something for mainstream use."

Having a child that has major restrictions in viewing from birth on gives me a very different look at technology. Simply knowing, that (by law) she will never be able to drive a car, autounomos vehicles are so much more than "cool technology / improvement of comfort". And smart glasses could help her in the future to literally brighten her perspective.

And there are a lot (!) of other things around. My wife is working with kids that have physical and /or mental disabilities - one of the items they used about 15 years ago was a so called "talker", which was a tablet with buttons that is speaking for you if you push the buttons...today, this is an app, at a friction of the initial price!

In my company, we employ people with disabilities, mainly physical disabilities, in the warehouse. Their work time is limited to their own strenght - so if robotics will support them at some point in time, integration will be even better.